BAGHDAD – The U.S. military said yesterday that its troops killed at least two men and a woman and wounded a teenager during a raid late Monday near Tikrit in northern Iraq. Iraqi officials said a young girl also was killed in the attack.

Military officials in Baghdad said in a statement that the killings happened when U.S. soldiers were fired upon as they attacked what they believed was a “terrorist cell.”

“While entering a building, coalition soldiers were attacked by small-arms fire,” the statement said. “The soldiers returned fire. Upon initial inspection, coalition forces discovered two men dead, a woman dead and an injured child.”

Iraqi police said those four casualties were family members living in a tiny, one-room house. Ali Hamed Shihab, a 47-year-old farmer; his wife, Naeema Ali, 45; and their son, Dhiaa Ali, 18, were killed. The wounded teen was Shihab's 16-year-old daughter.

Iraqi officials said a fifth family member, an 11-year-old girl, died yesterday on the way to a hospital.

The house is in the remote village of Adwar, 10 miles south of Tikrit. A reporter for The Associated Press went to the house yesterday, saw three bodies and shell casings on the floor, and quoted a relative who said she witnessed U.S. soldiers kick open the door and fire their weapons without provocation.

On Sunday, U.S. military officials acknowledged that U.S. troops had mistakenly killed nine Iraqi civilians in Iskandariyah, 25 miles south of the capital. Iraqi authorities said the victims included several checkpoint guardsmen.

The Iraqi army also was contending with the death under mysterious circumstances of a Mahdi army militiaman who was being detained at the Amara airport base in southern Iraq.

Munthir al-Mosawi, 27, a member of the Shiite militia founded by militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, died in custody Sunday after being held for three days on a Baghdad arrest warrant. A medical report concluded that al-Mosawi died of a “bullet in the head,” said a military official who read the document.

Iraqi officials gave varying accounts of al-Mosawi's death, while al-Sadr representatives threatened to call off a months-long cease-fire that has been credited with helping to reduce violence in Iraq.

Initial Iraqi army reports claimed that the Shiite militant committed suicide, but later accounts, including an explanation offered by Defense Ministry spokesman Muhammad al-Askari, said al-Mosawi died while trying to grab a prison guard's AK-47.

“He asked for water to drink,” al-Askari said. “When he was unshackled, he grabbed the guard's rifle and shot himself.”

Brigadier Ali Wahab, Amara's police commander, created a three-judge committee to investigate the death and announced that a second committee had been dispatched to Amara from the capital.

Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a senior al-Sadr representative in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said the death had led militia members to reconsider their detente. He said that in the end they chose not to retaliate, despite their deep distrust that the Iraqi judiciary will conduct an impartial investigation.